This date in science: John Glenn first American to orbit Earth | Space | EarthSky This date in science: John Glenn first American to orbit Earth By EarthSky in Space | February 20, 2016 On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He made three turns around the planet before returning safely. February 20, 1962. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on this date. He made three turns around the planet before returning safely in his space capsule, which was called Friendship 7. He followed two Russian cosmonauts in making this early orbit of our planet: Yuri Gagarin ( April 1961) and Gherman Titov (August 1961). While Glenn was in orbit, NASA controllers received an indication that the heat shield on his craft had come loose. They instructed Glenn not to jettison the rockets underneath the heat shield during re-entry, because the rockets might be able to hold the shield in place. Fortunately, the indication turned out to be a false alarm.

Glenn returned to space at age 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, making him the oldest person to fly in space. His mission’s primary scientific aim at that time was to study the effects of spaceflight on seniors. John Glenn climbs into the Friendship 7 spacecraft just before making his first trip into space on February 20, 1962. Photo via NASA John Glenn and Friendship 7 Here’s what John Glenn saw on February 20, 1962. Just 5 minutes and 44 seconds after launch, Glenn offered his first words about the view from his porthole: “This is Friendship 7. Can see clear back; a big cloud pattern way back across towards the Cape. Beautiful sight.” Three hours later, at the beginning of his third orbit, Glenn photographed this panoramic view of Florida from the Georgia border (right, under clouds) to just north of Cape Canaveral. His American homeland was 162 miles (260 kilometers) below. “I have the Cape in sight down there,” he noted to mission controllers. “It looks real fine from up here. I can see the whole state of Florida just laid out like on a map.

Beautiful.” Image via NASA Bottom line: John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962. His space capsule was called Friendship 7. Astronaut Bio: John Glenn, Jr. 1/99 John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (Colonel, USMC, Ret.) NASA Astronaut (former) PERSONAL DATA: Born July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. Married to the former Anna Margaret Castor of New Concord, Ohio. They have two grown children and two grandchildren. EDUCATION: Glenn attended primary and secondary schools in New Concord, Ohio. He attended Muskingum College in New Concord and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. Muskingum College also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in engineering. He has received honorary doctoral degrees from nine colleges or universities. SPECIAL HONORS: Glenn has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on six occasions, and holds the Air Medal with 18 Clusters for his service during World War II and Korea.

Glenn also holds the Navy Unit Commendation for service in Korea, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the China Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation, the Navy's Astronaut Wings, the Marine Corps' Astronaut Medal, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. EXPERIENCE: He entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in March 1942 and was graduated from this program and commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1943. After advanced training, he joined Marine Fighter Squadron 155 and spent a year flying F-4U fighters in the Marshall Islands. During his World War II service, he flew 59 combat missions. After the war, he was a member of Marine Fighter Squadron 218 on the North China patrol and served on Guam. From June 1948 to December 1950 Glenn was an instructor in advanced flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas. He then attended Amphibious Warfare Training at Quantico, Virginia.

In Korea he flew 63 missions with Marine Fighter Squadron 311. As an exchange pilot with the Air Force Glenn flew 27 missions in the in F-86 Sabrejet. In the last nine days of fighting in Korea Glenn downed three MIG's in combat along the Yalu River. After Korea, Glenn attended Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland. After graduation, he was project officer on a number of aircraft. He was assigned to the Fighter Design Branch of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics (now Bureau of Naval Weapons) in Washington from November 1956 to April 1959, during which time he also attended the University of Maryland. In July 1957, while project officer of the F8U Crusader, he set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York, spanning the country in 3 hours and 23 minutes. This was the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed. Glenn has nearly 9,000 hours of flying time, with approximately 3,000 hours in jet aircraft.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Glenn was assigned to the NASA Space Task Group at Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, in April 1959 after his selection as a Project Mercury Astronaut. The Space Task Group was moved to Houston and became part of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in 1962. Glenn flew on Mercury-6 (February 20, 1962) and STS-95 (October 29 to November 7, 1998), and has logged over 218 hours in space. Prior to his first flight, Glenn had served as backup pilot for Astronauts Shepard and Grissom. When astronauts were given special assignments to ensure pilot input into the design and development of spacecraft, Glenn specialized in cockpit layout and control functioning, including some of the early designs for the Apollo Project. Glenn resigned from the Manned Spacecraft Center on January 16, 1964. He was promoted to the rank of Colonel in October 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps on January 1, 1965.

He was a business executive from 1965 until his election to the United States Senate in November 1974. Glenn retired from the U.S. Senate in January 1999. SPACE FLIGHT EXPERIENCE: On February 20, 1962, Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 "Friendship 7" spacecraft on the first manned orbital mission of the United States. Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, he completed a successful three-orbit mission around the earth, reaching a maximum altitude (apogee) of approximately 162 statute miles and an orbital velocity of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Glenn's "Friendship 7" Mercury spacecraft landed approximately 800 miles southeast of KSC in the vicinity of Grand Turk Island. Mission duration from launch to impact was 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds.

STS-95 Discovery (October 29 to November 7, 1998) was a 9-day mission during which the crew supported a variety of research payloads including deployment of the Spartan solar-observing spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope Orbital Systems Test Platform, and investigations on space flight and the aging process. The mission was accomplished in 134 Earth orbits, traveling 3.6 million miles in 213 hours and 44 minutes. JANUARY 1999 This is the only version available from NASA. Updates must be sought direct from the above named individual. John Glenn's Historic Spaceflight Was No Sure Thing John Glenn's Historic Spaceflight Was No Sure Thing By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | February 20, 2012 12:00am ET MORE Astronaut John Glenn photographed in space by an automatic sequence motion picture camera during his historic orbital flight on "Friendship 7" on Feb. 20, 1962. Credit: NASA When John Glenn launched on the United States' first orbital spaceflight 50 years ago today (Feb.

20), NASA scientists weren't sure where he'd come down — or if he'd even survive the trip. Before Glenn completed three laps of Earth on Feb. 20, 1962, no American had spent more than 15 minutes in space. So NASA top brass and medical personnel had a laundry list of worries, from where Glenn's spacecraft would touch down to whether or not the astronaut's eyes would function properly in microgravity. "There were a lot of unknowns in the early days of spaceflight ," former astronaut Scott Carpenter, who completed an orbital mission of his own in May 1962, said Friday (Feb. 17) at a NASA event commemorating Glenn's flight. "We were considered guilty of being unable to fly in space and required to prove our innocence, counter to the American custom." On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn rode the Friendship 7 capsule into space, the first time an American orbited the Earth. In this image, Glenn enters the capsule with assistance from technicians. Credit: NASA Medical concerns By the time of Glenn's flight, space-race rival the Soviet Union had already launched two manned orbital missions.

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth once in April 1961, and his countryman Gherman Titov orbited our planet 17 times in August of that year, staying aloft for more than 24 hours. Both Gagarin and Titov returned to Earth safely after their flights. But NASA had no experience with human spaceflight beyond the 15-minute suborbital jaunts of Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom in 1961, so agency personnel worried about how Glenn's body would hold up during nearly five hours in space. Doctors were particularly concerned about how prolonged exposure to microgravity would affect Glenn's vision. [ Photos: John Glenn's Space Legacy ] "Some of the ophthamologists were literally concerned at that time that your eyes might change shape and your vision might change enough you couldn't even see the instrument panel enough to make an emergency re-entry if you had to," Glenn said during Friday's festivities. "They were enough concerned about it, we actually put a little miniaturized eye chart at the top of the instrument panel," he added.

"And that's still in Friendship 7, up in the Smithsonian [National Air and Space Museum]." NASA also worried that spaceflight might cause fluid to move around randomly in Glenn's inner ear, perhaps resulting in nausea and vertigo. And doctors weren't even sure if the astronaut would be able to swallow properly in microgravity, Glenn said. Concern and curiosity about digestive functions persisted through Carpenter's flight, three months later. Doctors weren't convinced astronauts would be able to metabolize food on orbit, so they had Carpenter perform a little experiment. [ Biggest Revelations of the Space Age ] "I was given some radioactive food — pap — in a toothpaste tube," Carpenter said. "And I was told to eat that on the first orbit." History has shown, of course, that the human body can perform basic functions in space. Astronauts routinely live on the International Space Station for six-month stints, though they must exercise assiduously to minimize the effects of microgravity, which include muscle wasting and decreased bone density. A dicey re-entry Glenn's flight plan called for Friendship 7 to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean several hundred miles southeast of Florida.

But NASA wasn't entirely sure that would work out, so Glenn prepared for the possibility of landing among "primitive" aboriginal peoples in backcountry Australia, Papua New Guinea or southern Africa. "You land, and the side blows off, and out steps this thing in a silver suit. You're going to be either like the god-king or dead pretty quick," Glenn said. "So I wanted a message for these people." So linguists at the Library of Congress translated a basic message of peace and friendship for Glenn, arming him with a few phrases in various aboriginal languages should the need arise. Friendship 7 eventually did re-enter roughly where it was supposed to, dropping into the Atlantic just 40 miles (67 kilometers) short of the planned landing zone. But the capsule's return to Earth was a bumpy and somewhat harrowing one. As Glenn prepared to re-enter the atmosphere, mission managers told him that Friendship 7's protective heat shield may have come loose. This was bad news; if the heat shield came off, the capsule would almost certainly burn up. Strapped to the outside of Friendship 7 was a package of small retro-rockets, which were designed to help slow the capsule's re-entry.

Glenn was told not to jettison the rockets after firing them, in the hopes that the straps would help hold the heat shield on. During re-entry, "there were flaming chunks of the retro-pack burning off and coming back by the window," Glenn said. "I didn't know for sure whether it was the retro-pack or the heat shield, but there wasn't anything I could do about it either way, except just keep trying to work and keep the spacecraft on its actual best attitude coming back in." Though everything worked out in the end, Glenn's success was far from assured or pre-ordained. In fact, launching him into orbit was something of a game of Russian roulette, experts say. The odds of success were comparable, anyway. "His odds of not surviving this was about one in six," former astronaut Steve Lindsey, who flew with Glenn on the space shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission in 1998, said in a recent NASA video. "So it was an extremely high-risk, unknown effort that they were going into, having never done it before." You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall .

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . Editor's Recommendations John Glenn's First Spaceflight | Astronotes admin – February 20, 2012 Posted in: Human Exploration On 20 February 1962, John Glenn (1921-2016) became the fifth human to enter space. For his spaceflight Glenn, a US Marine Corps aviator was strapped into a tiny Mercury capsule (named Friendship 7) just as Alan Shepard and “Gus” Grissom, the two earlier US astronauts had been. There was a big difference for Glenn’s flight; Friendship 7 sat atop an Atlas rocket rather than the rather smaller Redstone used to launch the first two Mercury missions. They had been simple ballistic lobs, but Glenn was going all the way into orbit. “Godspeed John Glenn”: A reminder of the days when NASA could send astronauts into orbit. (Image credit: NASA) Watched by a TV audience of 100 million, the Atlas functioned beautifully and Glenn became the first American (and third human; Gagarin and Titov preceded him) in orbit.

Glenn enjoyed both the view and the novel sensation of microgravity. At one point he noticed through his tiny window that his craft was surrounded by a swarm of tiny glowing motes which he called “fireflies”, he reported them to Mission Control and was surprised by how interested the men on the ground were by this phenomenon. There was a reason for this; a warning light at Mission Control suggested that Friendship 7’s heat shield had come loose, possibly the fireflies were debris released by this failure. If the heatshield was indeed faulty, Glenn’s mission would end with his horrific death as his craft disintegrated around him. Glenn looks every inch the space hero in this 1962 portrait. (Image credit: NASA) When Glenn was eventually told about this threat he was instructed to retain rather than release the Mercury’s retrorocket pack as he reentered the atmosphere. This was a risky action but it was hoped that the retrorocket pack’s hefty metal retaining straps would hold the shield in place.

Glenn endured a frightening re-entry; the capsule violently shook as he watched white-hot shards of metal stream from the inferno mere centimetres behind him ( a scene memorably recreated in the classic movie The Right Stuff – a movie which Glenn himself disliked). The small size of the Mercury spacecraft is apparent in this diagram. Note too the retrorocket pack just visible at the vehicle extreme rear. The door shown open on the spacecraft’s nose released a drogue parachute to slow the Mercury’s descent. (Image credit: NASA/Aerospace Projects Review) As it turn out it was the warning light rather than the heatshield that was faulty (the fireflies’ exact origin remains mysterious), and Glenn splashed down safely. His flight lasted just under five hours. Glenn was celebrated as a national hero, and retired from NASA shortly after. Controversially Glenn opposed NASA’s intention to recruit female astronauts and publicly stated this. No female astronaut flew on a NASA mission until Sally Ride’s flight in 1983 , by then Glenn had changed his position. After leaving NASA Glenn entered the world of politics and served as senator for Ohio from 1974 to 1995.

His astronaut career had a strange coda; in 1998 Glenn made a second space flight at the age of 77 when he flew on Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95), ostensibly as part of an experiment to study the effects of space flight on the elderly. Glenn became the oldest person to go into space, a record unbroken to this day. No Comments Start the ball rolling by posting a comment on this article! Leave a Reply 7 Things You May Not Know About John Glenn - History in the Headlines 7 Things You May Not Know About John Glenn December 8, 2016 By Barbara Maranzani Share HISTORY honors astronaut and former Ohio senator John Glenn, who died on December 8, 2016 at the age of 95. Share this: 7 Things You May Not Know About John Glenn Author 7 Things You May Not Know About John Glenn URL Google On February 20, 1962, John H.

Glenn became the third American in space and the first to orbit the Earth when he successfully completed three orbits aboard the space capsule “Friendship 7.” In the midst of Cold War tensions and amid the very real fear that the Soviet Union was winning the space race, Glenn’s accomplishment brought a sense of pride and relief to Americans and instantly made the 31-year-old Glenn a national hero. Glenn resigned from NASA in 1964, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974, representing Ohio for 25 years. In October 1998, Senator Glenn returned to space at the age of 77 as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery, making him the oldest person to fly in space. Glenn died on December 8, 2016, at the age of 95, following several years of declining health. John Glenn was a star before joining the Mercury program. John Glenn (Credit: NASA) Glenn had fallen in love with flying at an early age, building model airplanes while growing up in Ohio. In 1941, Glenn discovered a U.S. Department of Commerce program looking for students to train as pilots.

Just six months after he received his license, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Glenn initially enlisted in both the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Navy aviation cadet program, but was eventually assigned to the U.S. Marine Corps. Glenn flew 59 missions in the South Pacific, where one of his wingmen was baseball legend Ted Williams. After serving in the Korean War, Glenn was appointed to a naval test pilot program, where he completed one of the world’s first supersonic transcontinental flights in 1957. Glenn received an enormous amount of publicity following this feat, which brought him to the attention of the NACA, the predecessor to NASA, who selected him to become one of the Mercury 7 astronauts. John Glenn gave his space capsule it’s famous nickname. Glenn inspecting the artwork design for “Friendship 7.” (Credit: NASA) The official name for Glenn’s mission was Mercury-Atlas 6. “Mercury” for the mission program itself (named after the Roman god of speed), and “Atlas 6” to indicate that this was the 6th mission to use the newer, faster Atlas rocket as a launch vehicle.

As was common practice among most pilots, the astronauts selected for the Mercury program often gave their capsules personal nicknames—Glenn asked his children for suggestions on what he should name the vessel before finally deciding on the word “Friendship” and adding the number “7” to honor his fellow Mercury members. Glenn’s mission was delayed numerous times, leading to concern and anxiety. Guenter Wendt, the original pad leader for NASA’s manned programs, coaxes a smile from Glenn after a postponement of the mission. (Credit: NASA) Originally scheduled for December 1961 and then pushed to January 13, problems with the new Atlas rocket that would serve as the space capsule’s launching pad caused a two-week delay. On January 27, with television crews already set up to broadcast from both the launch site and Glenn’s home, where his wife, Annie, and his children were anxiously watching, poor weather conditions forced another postponement. When the mission was scrapped, the reporters, accompanied by none other than Vice President Lyndon Johnson, tried to gain access to Glenn’s home in hopes of interviewing his wife.

Annie refused to speak to them, and when John heard about the pressure put on his wife, he backed her up, leading to a clash with government officials. The launch was delayed yet again on January 30 after a fuel leak was discovered, followed by yet another weather delay. Finally, with all mechanical issues solved and fair weather forecasted, Glenn was once again strapped into Friendship 7 early on the morning of February 20, 1962. Glenn didn’t actually hear the legendary words “Godspeed, John Glenn.” John Glenn and Scott Carpenter reviewing the flight plan for the Mercury-Atlas 7 mission at Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Credit: NASA) As mission control performed its final system checks, test conductor Tom O’Malley initiated the launch sequence, adding a personal prayer, “May the good Lord ride all the way,” to which Carpenter, the backup astronaut for the mission, added, “Godspeed, John Glenn.” Carpenter later explained that he had come up with the phrase on the spot, but its did hold significance for most test pilots and astronauts: “In those days, speed was magic…and nobody had gone that fast.

If you can get that speed, you’re home-free.” The phrase soon became part of the public consciousness, but Glenn himself didn’t hear Carpenter’s comment until he had returned to Earth. Due to a glitch in Glenn’s radio, Carpenter’s microphone wasn’t on his frequency. There were several scary moments aboard Friendship 7. Glenn aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. The launch of Friendship 7 went flawlessly, and Glenn encountered few issues in the early stages of the flight. During his second orbit, mission control noticed a sensor was issuing a warning that Friendship 7’s heat shield and landing bag were not secure, putting the mission, and Glenn in danger. Officials did not immediately inform Glenn of the potential problem, instead asking him to run a series of small tests on the system to see if that resolved the issue, which eventually clued Glenn in to their concerns. After a series of discussions, it was decided that rather than following standard procedures to discard the retrorocket (an engine designed to slow down the capsule upon reentry), Glenn would keep the rocket in place to help secure the heat shield.

He successfully reentered the Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after a flight of 4 hours and 55 minutes. When officials inspected the recovered capsule, they determined that the heat shield had never been in danger and a faulty sensor had caused the problem. Glenn—and NASA—were mystified by an unusual sighting during the mission. A photo of Earth taken by John Glenn during the mission. (Credit: NASA) During the first of Glenn’s three orbits, he reported seeing a series of small particles floating outside his capsule. As he reported to NASA, he had never seen anything like it, and he thought it looked like a series of luminescent stars surrounding him. Glenn referred to the specks as “fireflies,” and tried banging on his capsule walls to see if he could make them move, which he could. Some NASA scientists worried that the sparks were a malfunctioning part of the space capsule or that’s Glenn’s mysterious vision was caused by a medical condition he encountered while in space, while others tried to find a more spiritual meaning to the celestial “fireflies.” So, what were they? The mystery was solved later that year, when Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter made his orbital flight aboard Aurora 7.

Carpenter also reported seeing the particles, and to him they looked like snowflakes. Turns out, Carpenter was pretty close to the truth. They were indeed bits of frozen condensation on the capsule’s exterior that broke off as it moved from through areas of varying temperatures. Glenn returned to space, 36 years after Friendship 7. STS-95 payload specialist John Glenn aboard the space shuttle Discovery in November 1998. (Credit: NASA) John Glenn remained with NASA until 1964, but did not return to space in any of the later Mercury missions. It is believed that President Kennedy and other government officials, well aware of the symbolic importance of the first man to orbit the Earth, ordered NASA to keep him grounded, for fear of his being injured or killed in a space program that was still, in many ways, in the developmental stage. Glenn returned to Ohio, where he became a successful businessman. He later entered politics, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974, serving four terms. Glenn maintained close contacts with NASA, and spoke often of his regret at not having been part of subsequent missions, including the lunar landings.

In 1998, however, John Glenn got his wish and returned to space. Though it had been more than 35 years since he had last suited up, Glenn was selected as part of the crew aboard the space shuttle Discovery. His participation, at the age of 77, would allow scientists to study the affects of space travel on the elderly. When Glenn returned from the nine-day mission, he and his fellow crew members were welcomed home with a ticker-tape parade in New York City, marking the second time Glenn had received such an honor. Tags At 90, John Glenn Looks Back - The New York Times The New York Times Space & Cosmos |50 Years Later, Celebrating John Glenn’s Feat Search MEMORIES John Glenn with President John F. Kennedy. In the winter of 1962, the nation needed a hero. Americans had yet to recover from the Soviet Union’s launching of the first spacecraft, Sputnik, in October 1957 — a rude jolt to our confidence as world leaders in all things technological. The space race was on. Soon after he took office in 1961, President John F.

Kennedy had thrown down the challenge to send men to the Moon by the end of the decade. But the Russians still set the pace, boastfully. They launched a dog into orbit, then the first man, Yuri A. Gagarin, and another, Gherman S. Titov. The United States lagged, managing only two 15-minute suborbital astronaut flights — only five minutes of weightlessness each time. Then, on Feb. 20, 1962 — 50 years ago next Monday — a Marine Corps fighter pilot from small-town America stepped forward in response to the country’s need. The astronaut was John Glenn , whom the author Tom Wolfe has called “the last true national hero America has ever had.” Continue reading the main story Squeezed into the cockpit of a Mercury spacecraft called Friendship 7, launched by an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Mr. Glenn circled the Earth three times, becoming the first American to orbit the planet. Perhaps no other spaceflight — all 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds of it — has been followed by so many with such paralyzing apprehension.

Photo Credit Illustration by Sean Mccabe; Photograph by NASA Mr. Glenn saw three sunsets and sunrises that Tuesday, from a maximum altitude of 162 miles. At each sunrise, an explosion of what looked like fireflies appeared outside the window, mystifying him. Then came a signal of a suspected problem that had ground controllers bracing for an uncertain, possibly catastrophic re-entry into the atmosphere. The ending was a happy one. A collective sigh of relief was heard across the land. The president rushed off to Cape Canaveral to hail the returning hero. Bands played. Ticker tape streamed from the high windows of Broadway. People cried. Never mind that a Soviet cosmonaut had already spent 25 hours in orbit. As Mr. Wolfe has written, “John Glenn made us whole again!” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Now, at 90, Mr. Glenn was reminded in one of two lengthy interviews that the author of “The Right Stuff” had judged him the country’s last true hero. His response was a kind of dismissive aw shucks.

“Hero” is an elastic word, after all, stretchable to fit a favorite ballplayer or a great conqueror in war or discovery — almost anyone admirable. “I don’t think of myself that way,” Mr. Glenn said. “I get up each day and have the same problems others have at my age. As far as trying to analyze all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.” (For his part, Mr. Wolfe stood by his characterization, saying a national hero was someone seen as “a great protector” of the people. “He really wasn’t their protector, but that’s what people felt and thought,” he said of Mr. Glenn in an interview last week. “He made them cry, and this made him a hero.”) Photo John Glenn in 2009. On Saturday, Mr. Glenn will again get a hero’s welcome at Cape Canaveral for a reunion with the dwindling Mercury space team, those remaining managers, engineers and technicians who sent the first Americans into space. On Monday and Tuesday, he will be honored with a dinner and a spaceflight forum at Ohio State University, home of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. Mr.

Glenn keeps an office at the school, holds seminars with students and is close to the archive of papers from his careers as an astronaut and, later, a four-term United States senator from Ohio and a candidate in the 1984 Democratic presidential primaries. It is quite an archive: about 1,800 boxes of materials. “I was a pack rat,” he said. He and his wife, Anna (he calls her Annie), divide their time between a house in a suburb of Washington and a condominium in Columbus. She was his childhood sweetheart, and their marriage has stood the test of almost 69 years of devotion in the turbulence of spaceflight and politics. From the time they came to public attention, each has seemed the other’s center of gravity. Through years of therapy, Mr. Glenn said, Annie has overcome the severe stammer that had made her ill at ease at public appearances. “She can give speeches now,” he said, and she likes talking to students of speech pathology. Both have had knee-replacement surgery. Their knees had made it hard for them, especially Annie, to climb on the wing and into the cabin of their twin-engine Beechcraft Baron.

They used to fly it on vacations and back and forth to Washington, sometimes logging as many as 160 airborne hours a year. Last month, as a concession to their aging knees, the Glenns sold their airplane, but Mr. Glenn was pleased to say he still has a valid pilot’s license. Photo John Glenn's 1962 flight into orbit captivated the nation. The other honored guest at the anniversary events in Cape Canaveral will be M. Scott Carpenter, the Mercury astronaut who was Mr. Glenn’s backup and radio link, called capcom, in the launching blockhouse that day of flight. The two are the only surviving members of what were known as the Mercury Seven. Virgil I. Grissom died in 1967 in an Apollo spacecraft fire during a launching-pad test. Donald K. Slayton died of cancer in 1993. Alan B. Shepard Jr. died of leukemia in 1998. L. Gordon Cooper Jr. died of natural causes in 2004. Walter M. Schirra Jr. died of a heart attack in 2007.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story In 1998, his last year in the Senate, the first American to orbit Earth became, at 77, the oldest person to travel in space. Mr. Glenn felt he still had enough of the right stuff. He had continued to pilot his own airplane and had kept in shape — “attitude and exercise,” he said, “that’s what keeps you going” — and he persuaded NASA to let him fly on the space shuttle Discovery and conduct tests on the physiological effects of nine days of weightlessness on older people. In the recent interviews, Mr. Glenn said, “I am not at all happy with some of the directions the space program is going, in particular retiring the space shuttles before we have a new heavy-lift launching system in place.” Mr. Glenn said he was concerned that since the final shuttle flight last July, the United States must depend on the Russian Soyuz space vehicles for ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station, assembled in orbit at a cost well over $100 billion, mainly from American taxpayers. The Soyuz is limited to three passengers and about 125 pounds of gear, hardly sufficient for hauling replacement parts for the space station.

“If the Russians had a hiccup with Soyuz, our manned space program would be ended, maybe for years,” Mr. Glenn said. Photo John Glenn in 1961 with the other Mercury astronauts. In a meeting with President Obama two years ago, Mr. Glenn made his case for continuing shuttle flights and full space station operations for several more years, contrary to President George W. Bush’s policy that a new generation of boosters and spacecraft would be developed with the savings from the cancellation of shuttle operations. “The president didn’t disagree with any of my arguments,” he recalled. “He said we just don’t have the money.” As Mr. Glenn settled into recollections of that February day in 1962, the interview glided into easy conversation over shared memories. Ten times over almost a month the launching was scheduled, only to be scrubbed because of poor weather or mechanical glitches. “On again, off again,” Mr. Glenn said. “I actually suited up four times, and two times was up on top of the Atlas, strapped into Friendship 7, ready to go.” Reporters from all over the world grew restive, desperate for anything to write about. After one cancellation, Mercury information officers begged Mr.

Glenn to give them something to tell the journalists. When he got off the booster, he went running on the beach and happened to see where sea turtles had buried their eggs. This was duly reported, and one writer remarked that it was understood the astronaut had a good recipe for turtle egg soup. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “Well, that got me into a whole lot of trouble with environmentalists,” Mr. Glenn recalled. “I got mail calling me everything but a good guy, and should be replaced.” The waiting got so tiresome for the press corps that when a waitress at one of the watering holes was shot dead by her boyfriend around midnight, some reporters rushed to file the story. A London tabloid declared it “the first successful shot here in weeks.” Video An Interview with John Glenn John Schwartz talks with the astronaut John Glenn about his mission as the first American to orbit the Earth. By Erik Olsen on Publish Date February 13, 2012. . Watch in Times Video » embed Mr. Glenn said he had not heard that tale before. At last, on the 11th attempt, with his backup, Mr.

Carpenter, bidding “Godspeed, John Glenn,” Friendship 7 lifted off for its three orbits of Earth. Christopher C. Kraft Jr., the flight director, remembers, “Nothing about John Glenn’s flight was easy.” At first sunrise, Mr. Glenn saw a swarm of greenish-yellow lights outside the craft, reminding him of fireflies. He saw them again at the other sunrises. “No one had anticipated this, and it was fascinating,” he said. “Turns out these were tiny moisture particles vented from the heat-exchange system, but I don’t know if we have ever explained their particular colors.” Near the end of the first orbit, trouble with the automatic control system forced Mr. Glenn to take manual control for much of the remaining orbits. He felt he was truly the pilot, not a passenger on autopilot. Not “Spam in a can,” in the minds of the veteran test pilots unimpressed by these new astronauts. Then a signal sent to the ground warned of a potentially more serious problem. It indicated that the craft had a loose heat shield. Flight controllers suspected it was a spurious signal, but could not be sure.

They decided not to jettison the retro rockets after they braked the capsule for its descent. The retro-pack should keep the heat shield in place and prevent serious damage to the capsule. “Glancing out the window during re-entry,” Mr. Glenn recalled, “I was seeing big chunks of something coming off. It was the retro-pack, not the heat shield, thank goodness. It had been a false alarm. If you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, you can see the burn patterns on Friendship 7.” In the epilogue to “The Right Stuff,” his best seller on the original seven astronauts, Mr. Wolfe wrote that the day of Glenn the hero “when an astronaut could parade up Broadway while traffic policemen wept in the intersections,” was no more. An era, he continues, “had come, and it had gone, perhaps never to be relived.” But in a time short of heroes, John Glenn keeps alive the memory. A version of this article appears in print on February 14, 2012, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: At 90, John Glenn Looks Back.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Godspeed Godspeed, John Glenn: 1st American in Orbit Reflects on NASA's Space Legacy By Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer | February 17, 2012 07:00am ET MORE Astronaut John Glenn photographed in space by an automatic sequence motion picture camera during his historic orbital flight on "Friendship 7" on Feb. 20, 1962. Credit: NASA Fifty years ago, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, and his nearly five-hour expedition ushered in a new era of spaceflight for the nation. On Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn piloted NASA's Mercury capsule , known as Friendship 7, three times around Earth, reaching a maximum altitude of about 162 miles (261 kilometers). Glenn's orbital milestone matched the groundbreaking achievement of the rival Soviet Union, which launched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit 10 months earlier. On Monday (Feb. 20), NASA will salute 50 years of Americans in orbit by honoring Glenn and his Friendship 7 flight.

Since that fateful journey, the agency landed astronauts on the moon, flew 135 space shuttle flights and constructed a $100 billion laboratory in space, among many other accomplishments. Following the Friendship 7 flight, Glenn was heralded as an American hero , and five decades later, his orbital journey still resonates with the public. "Fifty years seems like two weeks more than 50 years," Glenn, who will turn 91 on July 18, told SPACE.com. "I think the duration that people have been interested in that, the first flights back there, have been somewhat of a surprise. We're so used to the new and the untried in this country, whether it is the equivalent in automobiles or whatever it is, that I think we've gotten used to that. So it has been a little bit of a surprise that attention has been and keeps coming back to some of those very early flights." [ Photos: John Glenn's Space Legacy ] The social and political climate Part of this fascination is because the success of Glenn's Friendship 7 flight altered the tide in the fierce Cold War competition between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

The Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, in October 1957, four years later, Gagarin became the first person to reach space (and the first to orbit Earth) on April 12, 1961. "The Soviets at that time were claiming technical superiority to the United States because they could do rocket flights and ours were blowing up on the pad too often," Glenn said. "So it was against that backdrop and their claims of superiority in rocketry that we came into the program. It was something that we felt at that time, so there was a big effort to get us back on top again." On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn rode the Friendship 7 capsule into space, the first time an American orbited the Earth. In this image, Glenn enters the capsule with assistance from technicians. Credit: NASA After years of Soviet dominance , Glenn's success in orbit evened the playing field and reinvigorated America's space program, said John Logsdon, space policy expert and professor emeritus at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "It was a time of head-on-head superpower rivalries for global leadership," Logsdon told SPACE.com.

"Everyone was recovering from World War II and it was a very tense time in U.S.-Soviet relations. Having something positive happen, particularly in an area where the Soviet Union looked like it was ahead, was politically very important." [ Giant Leaps: Top Milestones of Human Spaceflight ] The flight also captivated the public, and after returning to Earth, Glenn received a hero's welcome in New York City. "It was the first of the ticker-tape parades through Manhattan," Logsdon said. "Everyone was glued to their television sets. It was new, exciting and adventurous." It was after seeing Glenn's New York City parade that Logsdon himself was inspired to pursue a career related to space. "I was in transition back to graduate school that spring and going into political science, and I remember very vividly seeing Colonel Glenn parade through Manhattan on March 1, 1962. And it was that more than Kennedy's speech or Sputnik that got me interested in space." This image shows the launch of Friendship 7, the first American manned orbital space flight. With astronaut John Glenn aboard, the Mercury-Atlas rocket is launched from Pad 14, February 20, 1962.

Credit: NASA The original seven Glenn, who was born in Cambridge, Ohio, in 1921, was one of NASA's original seven astronauts — the so-called Mercury Seven. The trials and tribulations of those involved in Project Mercury were later immortalized by author Tom Wolfe in "The Right Stuff." Selected in 1959 for the agency's first astronaut class, Glenn beat out a pool of 508 skilled, high-flying pilots and military men. While fellow Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil (Gus) Grissom flew to space before Glenn, the maximum altitude for both their flights put them only in the suborbital reaches. On that February day in 1962, Glenn circled the Earth three times in the Friendship 7 capsule before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. He became a pioneer for orbital spaceflight, and NASA would continue to push the boundaries of exploration. And after years of Americans in orbit, Glenn hopes to see that tradition continue. "I see exploration going two directions: one is macro, which is out to Mars or wherever we're going out into space and back," Glenn said.

"But to me, wherever we go we should try to maximize the research return of the capabilities we are developing. And that is what develops the support for the program. It does more good for people right here on Earth and does more to support the program for the long term than anything else we could do." For instance, more emphasis should be put on the research capabilities of the International Space Station , he added. "To me, we have never really exploited our ability in low-Earth orbit," Glenn said. "The International Space Station is the most unique laboratory ever built by human beings. It cost us over $100 billion and about 18 years to get it to the condition that it is in. We should be working on ways to do the research that makes the whole program doubly beneficial in addition to just seeing how far we can go and keep someone alive and bring him back." Life after Project Mercury Glenn left NASA in 1964 and entered into business and politics. He was elected to the United States Senate, representing his native Ohio as a Democrat, and served from 1974 to 1999. "Glenn's space career is only one facet of his life," Logsdon said.

"He was a very productive senator and he made his mark on American society in a number of ways." Throughout his tenure, Glenn remained a fervent supporter of NASA and a strong voice for the American space program. [ 50 Years of Presidential Visions for Space Exploration ] And in 1998, at age 77, Glenn flew to space again on the shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission. After spending almost nine days in space, Glenn became the world's oldest astronaut, a title he still holds. Shortly before his return to space, Glenn announced the creation of the John Glenn Institute (now the John Glenn School of Public Affairs) at Ohio State University in Columbus. The school featured a special exhibit about the Friendship 7 flight on campus and will lead a series of spaceflight forums and panels to mark the 50th anniversary. "John Glenn is, quite simply, an extraordinary American patriot," E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, said in a statement. "He is a man of boundless courage, limitless optimism and unswerving honor. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to celebrate his tremendous achievements and his important leadership at Ohio State.

He is one of this university’s — and this nation’s — greatest treasures." The school is also hosting a gala dinner Monday to honor Glenn and his achievements. Former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, who commanded the space shuttle Endeavour's final flight, will speak at the event. The seven crew members in training for the STS-95 mission aboard Discovery pose for photographers prior to participating in a training session at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Pictured, from the left, are Pedro Duque, Curtis Brown, Chiaki Nauto-Mukai, then-U.S. Sen. John H. Glenn Jr. (D.-Ohio), Stephen Robinson, Steven Lindsey and Scott Parazynski. Credit: NASA NASA is also holding special events to mark the occasion. Today (Feb. 17) at 10 a.m. EST, NASA chief Charles Bolden and Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana will host a special program on NASA Television with Glenn and fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter. Three months after Glenn's Friendship 7 flight, Carpenter became the second American in orbit on May 24, 1962. A news conference will be held at 3 p.m.

EST at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in the Mercury Mission Control exhibit. This event will be broadcast on NASA TV. On Saturday (Feb. 18), Glenn and Carpenter will participate in a ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex honoring those who made Project Mercury possible. Cabana, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and astronaut Steve Robinson, who flew with Glenn on Discovery's STS-95 mission in 1998 will speak at the event. On Monday (Feb. 20) at 1:30 p.m. EST, Glenn and NASA administrator Charles Bolden will speak live with the crew aboard the International Space Station. On March 2, Glenn will deliver the keynote address at a special event, called "Celebrating John Glenn's Legacy: 50 Years of Americans in Orbit," hosted by NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The agency's Glenn Research Center is named for the astronaut. SPACE.com contributor Robert Pearlman, editor of the website collectSPACE.com , contributed to this report. You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow .

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . Editor's Recommendations 6/12/2006 • American History On the morning of February 20, 1962, millions of Americans collectively held their breath as the world’s newest pioneer swept across the threshold of one of man’s last frontiers. Roughly a hundred miles above their heads, astronaut John Glenn sat comfortably in the weightless environment of a 9 1/2-by-6-foot space capsule he called Friendship 7. Within these close quarters he worked through his flight plan and completed an array of technical and medical tests as he cruised through the heavens. It offered the leg room of a Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ and the aesthetics of a garbage can, but the small capsule commanded an extraordinary view of the planet Earth. Through the craft’s window, Glenn saw thick, puffy, white clouds blanketing much of southern Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Atlas Mountains of North Africa stood like proud, majestic statues on a planet that seemed as timeless as the stars that twinkled an eternity away.

Dust storms blew across the deserts, and smoke from brush fires swirled into the atmosphere. ‘Oh, that view is tremendous,’ Glenn remarked over the radio to capsule communicator (Capcom) Alan Shepard, his fellow Mercury astronaut stationed back at mission control. As Friendship 7 passed over the Indian Ocean, Glenn witnessed his first sunset from space, a panorama of beautiful, brilliant colors. Before the conclusion of that historic day, he would witness a total of four sunsets–three while in earth orbit, and the fourth from the deck of his recovery ship. For Glenn, the historic voyage of Friendship 7 remains as vivid today as if it had happened yesterday. People still ask him what it felt like to be the first American to orbit the earth. And often he thinks of his capsule’s breathtaking liftoff and those subtle, emotionally empowering sunrises and sunsets. ‘Here on earth you see a sunrise, it’s golden, it’s orange,’ Glenn recalled recently.

‘When you’re in space, and you’re coming around on a sunset or sunrise, where the light comes to you refracted through the earth’s atmosphere and back out into space, to the space craft that refraction has the same glowing color for all the colors of the spectrum . . . .’ There have been more than ten thousand sunsets since his orbital flight helped launch the United States deeper into a space race with the former Soviet Union. And although Glenn’s political career as a Democratic senator from Ohio has kept him in the public eye, he is remembered by many of his countrymen as the first American to circle the planet and as the affable spokesman for the seven Mercury astronauts. Glenn marvels at how people all over the world still recall the heady days of the Mercury program. ‘It’s been heartwarming in some respects and it’s amazing in others,’ he says. ‘I don’t go around all day, saying ‘Don’t you want to hear about my space experience?’ Quite the opposite. But if the kids come to the office here, or if I run into them on the subway and they want to stop a minute, I don’t hesitate to stop and talk.

I think it’s good; I think that’s a duty we [former astronauts] have.’ By the time Glenn and Friendship 7 burst through the earth’s atmosphere, the United States was already a distant second in space technology, behind the Soviet Union. The race to begin to explore the universe had unofficially begun on October 4, 1957, when the Soviets launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite. ‘I think Sputnik sort of forced the hand,’ explains Gene Kranz, who served as Project Mercury’s assistant flight director and section chief for flight control operations. ‘I think we found ourselves an embarrassing second in space and related technologies. We were second best, and Americans generally don’t like that kind of a role.’ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, was more concerned about the country’s security than its self-esteem. With the Soviets having the rocket power to propel a satellite into space, he wondered how long it would be before they were capable of launching a nuclear bomb toward the United States. In response to this perceived Soviet threat, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) into being on July 29, 1958.

One of the first assignments given to the new agency was to launch a man into space and return him safely to earth, and that fall, Project Mercury was created to fulfill that daunting task. On April 9, 1959, NASA formally introduced to the world the seven test pilots who would, it was hoped, carry the U.S. banner to the heavens. Selected were: Lieutenant Commanders Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Walter Marty Schirra, and Alan B. Shepard of the Navy; Air Force captains Leroy Gordon Cooper, Virgil I. ‘Gus’ Grissom, and Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton; and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn of the Marine Corps. Born on July 18, 1921, Glenn was the oldest of the group, arguably the most celebrated, and an obvious candidate for Mercury from the beginning. A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, Glenn had flown 149 combat missions and been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross five times. After completing test-pilot school in 1954, Glenn went to work testing the fastest jets America could produce.

His rsum sparkled even more in 1957 after he set a transcontinental speed record for the first flight to average supersonic speed (seven hundred miles per hour) from Los Angeles to New York. From their first public appearance together, the Mercury 7 astronauts, as they came to be known, were celebrities and heroes. ‘We were at first extremely surprised when we were announced to the whole world, and how crazy everybody went over the whole thing,’ laughs Cooper. But enthusiasm for the project was one thing; making it a success was more difficult. There were countless variables and unknowns to conquer: weightlessness, a new capsule, an inconsistent booster in the Atlas rocket, and of course, the awesome specter of space. ‘To put it bluntly, we didn’t know what we were doing in many areas of the Mercury program and we were fortunate our country understood there was no achievement without risk,’ admits Kranz. As the Mercury project evolved and moved into the next decade, NASA found a crucial supporter in President John F. Kennedy. Just weeks into his term, however, the Soviets scored another technological coup.

On April 2, 1961, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space, orbiting the earth once during his one hour, forty-eight minute flight, which came just three months after a U.S. Redstone rocket had carried a chimp named Ham into space and brought him safely back. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard made America’s first, manned suborbital voyage, flying for 15 minutes and reaching an altitude of 116 miles. Compared to Gagarin’s flight around the world, Shepard’s 302-mile mission was a mere stopover between ports of call. It was, however, a major boost to America’s pride. While Gagarin flew under a cloak of secrecy, Shepard’s flight was broadcast live on television. The early success of the Mercury Program spurred President Kennedy to inspire NASA to reach for new heights. On May 25, he grabbed the world’s attention when he told Congress that the nation’s new goal was to complete a manned trip to the moon before the end of the decade.

For the first time in its space duel with the Soviet Union, the United States, which had so far amassed just 15 minutes of manned space-flight time, had set the stakes. Gene Kranz recalls with a laugh that ‘. . . we thought he was crazy,’ but the astronauts also felt energized to meet the new challenge. NASA turned its efforts up a notch that summer. In July, Gus Grissom replicated Shepard’s short suborbital flight, and by the fall, NASA was ready to attempt putting a spacecraft in orbit. As a final test in preparation for a manned trip, a chimpanzee named Enos was launched into space in late November. The craft carrying Enos completed two orbits before landing safely back on earth, after which NASA announced that on December 20 of that year, John Glenn would make the first American orbital flight. Before taking this next giant leap toward the moon, however, NASA had to ensure that an astronaut could function in a weightless environment for an extended period of time. Some scientists feared that without proper equipment and technology, a space traveler’s eyeballs would bulge out of their sockets and change shape.

This, in turn, would distort his vision and preclude his flying the craft should any of the automatic controls fail. Also, scientists feared that fluid in the inner ear might float freely into the air and that Glenn would become so nauseated and disoriented that he would be unable to perform his tasks. In addition to its concerns about Glenn’s adaptability to weightlessness, NASA worried about the inconsistent Atlas booster, the huge rocket designed to push Glenn’s ship into orbit. Two of the five unmanned test firings conducted on the 93-foot Atlas prior to Glenn’s mission had failed. The memory of one of those failures has remained vivid for Glenn. It was a night test, he remembers, ‘and it was very dramatic–searchlights and a beautiful starlit night. Not a cloud in the sky. They light this thing, and up she goes . . . . At about 27,000 feet it blew up right over our heads. It looked like an atom bomb went off right there.’ To add to the mounting tension, poor weather and mechanical problems with the rocket forced NASA to’scrub’ Glenn’s scheduled mission nine times.

Finally, on February 20, 1962, seven months after America’s last manned flight, John Glenn would don his bulky pressure suit for what would be the final time. Rising out of bed in his ‘ready room’ at NASA’s space craft center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:20 a.m., he checked the weather report, which indicated a fifty percent chance of rain. Glenn showered and shaved and had the customary astronaut’s breakfast of steak and eggs, before taking a pre-flight physical. If the many weeks of anticipation weighed on Glenn’s mind, his body did not reflect it. Four hours later, Glenn made the short ride to the rocket’s launch site. When he emerged from the transfer van, Launch Pad 14 resembled a movie set as giant floodlights waved streams of milky white upon the rocket and the surrounding area. The huge Atlas was a glowing silver sword in the coal black night. ‘My flight was–it was like you staged it,’ recalls Glenn. ‘It was Hollywoodesque.’ Two hours before his scheduled liftoff, Glenn squeezed into the cramped cabin of Friendship 7, perched atop the Atlas rocket.

The sky was clearing, and just before 8:00 a.m. technicians began the laborious task of bolting on the entry hatch of the craft. Sealed inside the capsule, Glenn felt truly alone. The minutes ticked by slowly as he calmly and methodically worked through his preflight checklist. Finally, Glenn heard the flight team give his mission an ‘A-OK’ over the radio. With all systems functioning normally, Glenn acknowledged his preparedness with a firm ‘ready.’ As the final countdown to liftoff began, backup pilot Scott Carpenter’s voice crackled over Glenn’s radio: ‘Godspeed, John Glenn.’ At 9:47 a.m. the rocket’s three engines ignited. Friendship 7 began to vibrate as the mighty Atlas built up 350,000 pounds of thrust, the force needed to lift Glenn and his craft into orbit. For a few interminable seconds, the massive rocket held steady. Finally, its hold-down clamps released, and the Atlas slowly, agonizingly clutched and pulled at the bright blue sky. ‘We are under way,’ Glenn reported to Mercury Control.

Minutes later, Glenn was a hundred miles above the earth and traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour. With all systems running smoothly during his initial orbit, Control advised him that he ‘had a go’ for at least seven turns around the earth. Unlike Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who had experienced nausea and dizziness during his recent 16-orbit flight, Glenn worked and ate without difficulty. As he gazed earthward through the capsule’s window, he noted how fragile the planet appeared, shielded from the unforgiving vacuum of space by a film of atmosphere that seemed no more dense than an eggshell. Back at Mercury Control, the flight team, headed by Chris Kraft and Kranz, kept their focus on more practical considerations. After Glenn’s first orbit, Control had received a telemetry signal indicating that his capsule’s heat shield might be loose. If that signal was correct, Glenn and the spacecraft would disintegrate in the three-thousand-degree heat generated by reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. There seemed to be only one solution to this potentially tragic problem.

If Glenn refrained from jettisoning the ship’s retro-rocket package, a normal procedure just before reentry, its titanium straps might hold the shield in place. Control advised Glenn of their decision to end his flight and ordered him to plan for reentry after his third orbit. Unwilling to burden Glenn with concern over the possible heat-shield malfunction, Control offered no explanation for their decision until he was safely home. Glenn was suspicious, but all parts of Friendship 7 seemed to him to be working properly so he concerned himself only with what was within his control. Before long, the capsule splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. ‘When I started back in through the atmosphere, when the straps that held the retropack on burned off, one of them popped up in front of the window,’ Glenn remembers. ‘I thought the retropack or the heat shield was breaking up. It was a real fireball. But the heat shield worked fine.’ Glenn’s flight was a public relations boon for the U.S. space program. He returned to a hero’s welcome and a wildly emotional New York City ticker-tape parade. The United States had made a significant step forward in its competition with the Soviet Union and its quest for the moon.

Few people knew, however, that the nation’s most famous pilot would never again fly in space. As Glenn recalls, ‘President Kennedy had passed word to NASA, and I didn’t know this for some years, that I was not to be used again on a flight, at least for a while. You can’t believe being the focal point of that kind of attention when we came back. I don’t know if he was concerned about political fallout, or what.’ Glenn was disappointed that he never again traveled into space, but declares,’I don’t feel cheated because I had such a tremendous flight.’ Three years after the confetti and streamers had blown away, John Glenn left NASA and, relegating space flight to a vivid memory, moved into another public arena. Politics is a high-profile world in which Glenn’s clean-cut image and amiable personality easily endeared him to his constituents and to the public in general. In 1974, he was elected to the U.S. Senate by his home state of Ohio, an office he has held through three more terms. Despite the passage of more than a quarter century, Glenn easily recalls the innocent joy he found in those wondrous space sunsets.

He has never lost the ability to draw inspiration from his experiences and to channel it into a positive outlook. ‘I think its an attitude,’ he says, of maintaining his inner youth. ‘I think kids have an expectation of what’s going to happen tomorrow. I think some people are able to maintain that whole thing, this expectation about what they’re looking forward to.’ Not surprisingly, Senator Glenn can easily find his time consumed by the business of Capitol Hill. But when a red-headed, freckle-faced teenager with blue eyes ablaze asks Glenn to describe a launch or splashdown, the senator from Ohio again becomes one of America’s first astronauts, as he relives that historic day in 1962 when time stood still and three space sunsets blazed like campfires of a thousand sparkling colors. This article was written by Bryan Ethier and originally published in October 1997 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

Question: What was John Glenn/'s first spacecraft called?
Answer: Friendship 7